In the good old days of Windows XP we had the Microsoft Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for mounting ISO's.
Since Vista I have struggled to find a driver level shell extension that works on a 64 bit Windows.
I have tried Virtual Clone Drive and have no real complaints but what I really want is software that behaves just like MVCDControlPanel ie:
- I don't want a permanent drive waiting to mount an ISO sitting in my drive list.
- I really liked the tiny footprint and minimal resource usage of MVCDControlPanel so something that doesn't use much CPU (when it isn't reading ISO's).
- Preferably with a right-click shell extension to mount an ISO or simply open it as you would a zip file.
- It only needs to provide read-only access to the ISO
- I always prefer software that doesn't stick its branding and silly logos or icons all over the place or on the temporary drive in explorer
I'm happy to pay for it. What are my options?
Best Answer
By far the best free ISO mounting tool out there is Pismo file mount.
Some highlights:
Some things you will want to pay attention to though is that by default it will not mount the ISO to a drive letter but instead mount it to a UNC path which can cause some software installers to fail when installing from the mounted path. Just make sure you specify that you want Pismo to mount to a drive letter when you are doing the mount and it will work fine.
Here is the unattended install of SQL to demonstrate my real world use of Pismo.